Trail of Flame and Flower
by SabaceanBabe
Summary: Between her boots, standing out as though glowing with a light of their own in the otherwise dimly lit corridor, were… Flower petals?


Trail of Flame and Flower

Author: SabaceanBabe

Rating: PG-13

Setting: post PK Wars

Disclaimer: They don't belong to me and I'm not making any money off this. Please don't sue.

Author's note: Written with love for Winterspel -- Happy birthday! I hope it's not too schmoopy. :P Thank you, StarsGoBlue and Lyssie for the beta.

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The corridor was devoid of all life save that of Moya herself as Aeryn made her way to the room that she shared with her husband and young son, and the light was much more dim than it should be. This wasn't the sleep cycle.

Grey eyes narrowed, her long fingers first released the catch of her leather holster, then closed around the butt of her pulse pistol, freshly cleaned and fully charged. Listening intently, Aeryn drew the pistol and continued down the corridor.

"Pilot?" she whispered. No response. "Chiana?" Again, nothing. A few more steps brought her to the t-shaped intersection with the corridor that dead-ended in their quarters. When she cautiously turned the corner, the quality of the surface beneath her boots abruptly changed and she looked down. Between her boots, standing out as though glowing with a light of their own in the otherwise dimly lit corridor, were…

Flower petals?

Frowning, Aeryn took another step forward. This time, although she still held her weapon ready, she gave a good portion of her attention to the floor. Beginning just beyond the intersection and forming a path several denches wide down the center were red, orange, and pale purple petals.

"I am going to kill him," she stated to no one. "You're a dead man, John Crichton." In counterpoint to her words, which were uttered loudly enough to carry, she holstered her gun, the ghost of a smile playing about her lips. Stepping between the wall and the trail of faintly glowing petals, which became more densely packed the further she went, Aeryn followed the trail, unsurprisingly, to her quarters.

As she made her final approach, the faint glow of the petals melded with a warm golden glow that seeped out between the privacy curtains drawn across the opening. There was a gap just wide enough for her to see dozens of lit candles.

Aeryn pushed aside one curtain and stepped into the chamber. Candles covered every flat surface in the room. There were clusters of them, varying in size and shape and color, in sweeping lines across the floor. Between arcing lines of tiny flames were more flower petals. They led straight to the bed.

John was nowhere to be seen, but she felt him behind her before he said a word or touched her. Like a line of electricity, connecting them in a way she would never have thought possible before she met him, Aeryn knew it when John slipped into the room after her.

Warm human hands slid slowly down her bare shoulders, caressed her arms, stroked her skin until his fingers reached hers. Hands entwined, he drew her arms across her stomach, crossed them in front of her at her waist, which had the effect of drawing his front against her back. The heat of him scorched through her leathers.

"You're insane. Do you know that?"

He nipped her ear. "Surprise." Sucked at the soft spot just below. "I missed you."

"Mmm…" She leaned back into him, tilted her head to the side to give him better access. "Is that why you tried to provoke me into shooting you?" She gasped as he slid one set of their entwined hands into her waistband, which he'd managed to deftly unfasten while distracting her with his mouth.

"Yep." He licked the spot he'd just sucked. "Mission accomplished?" He moved out from behind her; the sudden loss of his heat caused her to shiver. He chuckled, the sound purely masculine. She shivered again and he put his mouth to work on the hollow at the base of her throat.

"Mmm hmmm…" she murmured. "Accomplished, yes." A sharp intake of breath as he traced a trail across her collarbone with his teeth.

"No trouble?" He returned his mouth to her throat even as his hands slipped from hers and he pushed her leathers lower on her hips.

"Not a bit." She reached up with one hand and caught him by the jaw, her grip tighter than she'd intended on his smoothly shaven skin. Brilliant blue eyes, wide and attempting innocence, met hers, but the look in those eyes was anything but innocent. Neither of them said another word as she claimed his mouth in a searing kiss.

They had been apart for nearly two weekens -- she needed to taste him more than she needed to breathe.

For several hundred microts, there was only breathing, harsh and fast, and the sound of leather and cloth sliding over skin before becoming silent in turn as they pooled on the floor. When all that remained was the whisper of skin on skin, Aeryn allowed John to back her up until her knees connected with the edge of the bed, the flower petals soft and cool as velvet beneath her bare feet.

She slipped one leg between his, reveling in the faint rasp of his hair against her own smooth calf, until she was able to hook her heel around the back of his knee. She exerted pressure, sudden and hard. John lost his balance and dragged her down with him onto the bed.

Using his momentum, he rolled until he was on his back and she on top of him. Her hair fell in a cascade of black silk around his face. He smiled up at her and she leaned down and bit his lip.

"Ow!"

"Where is D'Argo?" A single arched brow told him, from cycles of experience, that he wasn't going to get anything more from her until she had the answers she wanted.

John grinned. "With Pip. They're in the center chamber, eating dinner."

"So she's babysitting." A statement, not a question.

"She is," he affirmed. A sudden sweeping motion of his arms brought her down on top of him, the chuff of his breath warm on her face. "Any more questions?"

Finally, Aeryn allowed herself to smile. "No." She licked at the spot on his lower lip where she'd earlier bitten him.

"Then I have one of my own."

Rather than letting him ask his question, she slanted her mouth over his in a slow, drugging kiss that lasted several hundred more microts. When she broke the kiss, she gave him a wicked grin of her own. "You were saying?"

He looked a little dazed, but continued right where he'd left off. "Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?"

She rolled her eyes and slumped down on him, laughing. "You really are completely insane."

"And you," he replied, all that he felt for her shining from his eyes, "are the Radiant Aeryn Sun."


End file.
